He drew back his head, eyebrows hugely raised. ‘Please — what?’
‘Please — well, please, if you would just do as I ask you: go away from here
‘Go away?’ he said. ‘What — now?’
She dropped her hands from his arms, looked up at him doubtfully. ‘Now or later. As long as you won’t come back?’
He was teasing her: amused, indulgent but totally unmoved by this magical proximity which in her innocence she had supposed irresistible to all men, a simple attribute of any woman sufficiently attractive. ‘You make it very difficult,’ he said. ‘Before this butterfly caress of yours — perhaps. But now… For if I go before its promise is realised — won’t the temptation to return prove too much for me? And if I go later, it will surely be increased a hundredfold?’ He held back his head, looking down, his eyes full of mocking laughter, pretending deprecation. ‘Never since the Garden of Eden, my dear, has a first kiss been more mistimed.’
‘It wasn’t a kiss at all,’ she said, crossly.
‘Wasn’t it? You surprise me. It had all the effects of one.’
‘This is not my experience of the effects of kisses,’ said Gilda.
‘No?’ He went on laughing. ‘What is your experience then, if I may ask?’ And he invited: ‘Come, show me!’
‘I’m talking about the effect upon a man.’
‘As a man, then, don’t I measure up to expectation?’
She took a deep breath. She said, sweetly now: ‘That we have yet to discover — haven’t we?’
But it was very difficult to seduce a man who would keep on laughing. No blanching face here, no nostrils growing pinched and white, no avidly searching fingers, ripped clothes and buttons flying… His kiss was sensuous, yes, when at last it came, and she felt that within him that little flame had leapt, the first kindling of the blaze of passion. But still he laughed; the breeches and boots amused him vastly, he vowed he had never made love with a boy and must first have undeniable proofs that she was the woman she claimed to be. She produced the proofs but, she could not help feeling, in a somewhat business-like fashion. Used enough to laughter herself, she still could somehow find none here — the whole affair puzzled and a little bewildered her, accustomed as she was to the swiftly ignited conflagration of Y Cadno’s love-making, that blazed and glowed and sputtered and flared like a box of fireworks lit by a single match, till at last both parties burned up and were consumed by it to ashes. The great bed of hay was heaped in its corner, sweet-scented, dry and inviting; by now she should be writhing and panting there, fighting against her own inevitable, delicious surrender. Instead the gentleman remained upon his feet and if he held her, did so almost more as though he submitted to her cajolments than courted them; and laughed and kissed and teased and titillated but by no means seemed himself overwhelmed by any great longing for the comforts of the bed of hay. Good heavens! she thought — am I so far reduced that I must ask a man outright to accept my favours? And yet it was so deeply necessary that she should extract his promise. She decided at last upon provocation, a pretence at retirement from the fray. ‘It grows late; my men must be wondering what’s happening to me…’
‘I hope not too anxiously,’ he said at once, all concern. ‘For after all — nothing is.’
‘Very true. And so therefore may you not just as well release me—?’
‘But it’s you that holds me,’ he said, standing back a little, lifting up his hands, leaving himself, sure enough, still in her embrace.
She dropped her own hands immediately. ‘All I mean is,’ she said, hanging on tightly to her rising exasperation, ‘that I think the time has come when I must ask you to let me go home.’
‘I do so with infinite regret,’ he said courteously, stepping back and motioning her gracefully to precede him to the door.
She was startled into exclamation. ‘You’d let me go? You’re not going to — take me?’
‘At least I am not going to force you.’
‘At this rate,’ she said tartly, ‘it seems almost more a case of my forcing you.’
‘And never a more willing victim,’ he assured her, still laughing, and held out his arms to her, wrists crossed as though bound for the sacrifice.
And now she did at last burst into laughter. ‘Oh, you!’ And she ran at him and gave him a great push that sent him flying backwards, landing in a laughing heap on the bed of hay; and flung herself down after him and caught his head in her hands and held it fast under the rain of her kisses. ‘Wretch and fiend, you know very well that I must seduce you into giving me your promise — to poach no more upon Y Cadno’s territory.’
‘But isn’t that just what I’m doing at this moment?’ he protested; not, however, noticeably desisting.
‘You’re a wicked, wicked tease,’ she said; and after a little while: ‘And a wicked, wicked lover.’
‘Lover is a beautiful word,’ he said; and all of a sudden, laughed no longer. ‘It implies in one’s passion — at least a little love.’
‘Yes,’ she said; and, again after a while: ‘I think that up to now I can have known only the passion. It’s a very sweet addition– the little love.’
She rode back with him to where her two men lay hidden by the wayside and there reined in her pony and called goodnight to him in accents loudly and clearly to be overheard by them. ‘And I have your solemn undertaking—?’
‘I go my ways tomorrow,’ he swore, ‘and will ride these roads no more.’
‘No repudiations of this promise as having been extracted under duress?’
‘No, no,’ he vowed, and she heard once again in his voice the undertones of that wicked laughter. ‘Though under such duress as I have never before experienced.’
‘Very well; then see to it!’ she said severely; and when he was gone led the men back and showed them the scene of his undoing — the little gallery from which she had challenged him at pistol point, had conducted the long, long, cat-and-mouse struggle until, finding himself finally trapped, he had held up his arms in surrender; the crooked stair down which she had crept, keeping him all the time covered, till she could come close up to him and snatch away his gun and so force him into his solemn undertaking, to — to poach no longer upon Y Cadno’s preserves. And here was the bag of gold which she had taken from him as he stood there helpless, poor wretch, and divided with him equally so that he ride away not too hopelessly discomforted and empty-handed to boot…
From that hour forward there was no more question as to who should reign as leader at the Court of Foxes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SO THE WEEKS PASSED by and in the rocky fortress in the narrow Welsh valley ringed in by the great mountain plateau of Carmarthenshire, the ex-Countess, ex-Marchesa, walked and talked and cursed and swore and all the time had her way with a gang of ruffianly highwaymen and their women as violent as themselves. And alternately sat in a soft dress and tended and soothed and whispered sweet nothings and handed out tiny doses of the dulling laudanum… The wound was at last clean and healing, but she dared not let him risk the long ride in an unsprung vehicle jolting over the rough, pitted path that led to the rough pitted lane that led to the high toby, hardly less smooth beneath iron-rimmed wooden wheels; dared not, either, let him up and out of his room — for, wandering about the Cwrt, how could he fail to perceive that other self of hers? But almost daily she called the gang together and adjured them: ‘At your peril, let his lordship know how I fight and plan for you…!’
And she fought and planned. Under her leadership they were prospering now but with less work (and therefore less danger) than ever before. The old days of wild brave forays under the leadership of the Fox were gone; now every move was thought out beforehand, her wit quick to assess the news brought in by Dai Thomas and to make deductions from it. And she rode with them always, in the dark brocade suit which she had at random picked out from the heap at the fort but which now had become like a suit of armour to her; in the tricorne hat with her hair tied back into i
ts neat black bow. Her presence at first amused, then inspired and at last almost awed them. I am like Joan of Arc, she would think to herself, triumphantly putting up a firearm that had sent a man howling into the night; and never paused to consider how unsaintly a Joan was this who through the lengthening nights robbed rich and needy alike, wounded without mercy, terrified without compassion, rode off without pity for what ruin she might leave behind. It is all for him, she would say to herself, if for a moment her too easy conscience rose up and reproached her; but within her deepest heart she knew that the adventure, the excitement and the power were a yeast in her that had nothing to do with her love.
She had been right about the stream of visitors to Castell Cothi; all of them the more ruthlessly set upon in that, with Lord Tregaron in the hands of the gang, his family dared make no outcry to the law. Then the season was good; many of the great folks were changing their quarters while the weather yet held, going up to London or coming down to their country estates, to settle for the winter. And if there were no work on the roads, she would call for volunteers from among the older men — who came joyfully, starved of the spice of danger they had grown accustomed to — and ride through the evening to some remote farm, steal silently to the grazing-fields and drive off a dozen or so of the black Welsh cattle peacefully grazing there; chivvying them home along the muddy lanes with the help of the small brown bob-tailed Corgis, bred low and bandy-legged so that a flying hoof kicked out, passed harmlessly over their heads. Even the young boys had their share of adventure, riding off up the mountains with her to where the sheep grazed, unguarded, each flock keeping to its boundaries from a knowledge passed down through the generations; she loved to wait on the lower slopes and watch the small figures toiling up through the bracken, to hear through the evening stillness the thin, shrill whistling of their messages to the clever, crouching, creeping dogs — to see the gathered sheep come suddenly pouring down the mountain side, like milk tipped out of a bucket… The farmers slept uneasily indeed in those days of the reign of Y Lluinoges, the Vixen of Cwrt y Cadno.
There were reverses. John Jones Tomorrow was shot and fell and had to be left to his fate, two were injured, one severely; she herself sustained a flesh wound that made her sit very uncomfortably in the saddle for some days to come, to the tune of their not un-affectionate jeering; once or twice things went wrong and they came away empty-handed. The men took these reverses badly, blamed it all on to her. Each time she would say a few brief, rough words at the council rock, formally proposing that Dio should resume the leadership in her place. ‘No, no, Madam Vixen,’ he would reply, half scared, half laughing, ‘you’ve picked up the load; do you carry it!’ For all their grumbling, none ever contradicted him.
A day came when Dai Thomas rode back from Caio with glad tidings. ‘The Lady Blanche of Trove Hall beyond Lampeter, leaves for London two nights hence.’
‘From Castell Cothi?’ said Gilda.
‘No, no, she was but driving to her own home that night with the two gentlemen as escort as far as Castell Cothi which is on the way to Trove Hall in Cardiganshire.’
They sat in the great cavern-hall discussing it, the weather being nowadays too cold for outdoor meetings. ‘She leaves with her father day after tomorrow,’ said Dai Thomas. ‘An early morning start — they should pass the turning to Porthyridd a little after dawn.’
‘She’ll not come through the forest then?’
‘No, no, squawks night and day for her father to bring her by the high road. Tegwyn Caio had it from one of their footmen who came into the inn at Caio and drank a little deeper than was wise. On Wednesday, early, by the high road from Lampeter to Llandovery, and so on to Monmouth.’
‘Will you dare take her by daylight, Madam Vixen? And on the high toby? Once warned, they’ll carry as little as possible.’
‘She brought a lot with her when she rode this way before,’ said Gilda. ‘Didn’t you see her jewels, as I tumbled them in the mud? She must take them back with her to London, I suppose: wherefore all this anxiety? We must think it over.’
She went away and thought it over long and carefully herself; commanded an early morning excursion to the Lampeter-Llandovery road on the Wednesday, and herself rode out alone before dawn on the Tuesday, leaving only a message to say that she would be back before afternoon.
Up and up, over the mountain, plunging downwards again, mile after mile through the hanging forests till at last she saw to her left the high peak of Twm Shon Catti’s hide-out, a dark cone against the morning sky in the sickle sweep of the river Towy. No finer hiding place could exist for a man on the run, its tip commanding the three valleys converging upon it and its rocky summit providing a score of caves where a fox, on a bed of dry leaves, might lie snug enough… And if that’s where he hides, she thought, he’ll be here — not a doubt of it.
He came to her, looming up out of the chilly morning grey; and as her pony halted, brought his own close up against it, leaned across from his saddle and caught her by the shoulders, kissing, first lightly, then with the old once-thrilling violence, her unkissing mouth. She made no response; strong now in her love for David, only coolly suffered it. ‘Well, well, sir — are you so lonely in your eagle’s nest that you dash out to the embraces of any old rider who comes trit-trotting this way, breeched or unbreeched?’
‘Why?’ he said, as coolly. ‘Do you think of unbreeching?’
‘You know very well what I mean. In breeches or in petticoats.’
‘In breeches or in petticoats I’d recognise you, my shining one. Besides I knew you’d come. I knew you’d not resist her.’
‘My Lady Blanche, daughter of the Earl of Trove?’
‘Who sends her footman all the way to Caio for his potations.’
She laughed. ‘So much trouble to inform the whole world that she’d go by the high road and on such and such a day. It followed that she’d come through the forest and one day earlier; for, having found ourselves tricked, we’d be ready for her if she came later.’ She gave the reins a flap and started the pony off again. ‘There’s a small drovers’ inn by the bridge across the Towy. On man standing alone on the roof there, might command the whole cortege.’
He ambled along easily beside her. ‘One man has just done so.’
‘You mean—? You mean the coach has passed? I’ve ridden all this way for nothing?’
‘You are not very civil. Have you not met me?’
‘I had rather have met the Lady Blanche. But…’ She could not conceal her admiration; she herself had counted on his being here to assist her. ‘You managed it all single-handed?’
He laughed. ‘You flatter me. Not quite single-handed, no. True, I played your very trick of conducting all from the roof of the drovers’ inn; but the landlord has a pretty daughter who was not above a little scheme to help me relieve the lady — her coach once halted — of her gewgaws.’
That old, bewildering tide of jealousy welled up in her once more; and, because she was tired and hungry, perhaps, because of the shock of discovery that she came too late — somehow, absurdly, infuriatingly, the pearly morning was growing oddly grey, grey and swirly, and there was a beading of sweat along her brow and a longing only to let go, to give herself up to nothingness. But he had slipped out of the saddle — one hand gripped her shoulder, holding her upright in her own, one hard hand slapped sharply at her cheek. ‘Come, pull yourself together, my pocket highwayman, what nonsense is this? The great Madam Vixen — the fearless, the bold, the prettiest cut-throat, so they say, and the savageest, riding the roads of Wales — having the vapours all over me like any silly lady of the ton! Come — up I say!’
And she came to herself at once, shook the cobwebs from her mind. ‘I’ve ridden a long way, hurrying; and not breakfasted, that’s all it is.’
He looked at her doubtfully. ‘There’s food a-plenty up in my lair. Could you ride so far?’
She was alert in a moment. ‘Yes, yes, it was but a moment’s malaise. And I should dearly
love to see it — Twm Shon Catti’s mountain.’
‘Gareth y Cadno’s mountain now,’ he said.
The morning was growing bright and they rode very amicably, side by side on the rough little ponies; crossed the bridge over the river and saw ahead again the stark, solitary peak at so much odds with the rounded mountains about it. Below it lay the age-old farmhouse of Ystradfin. ‘I find them most obliging. Milk, butter, cheese and bread appear upon a stone slab at the foot of the mountain each day, as though to propitiate a god.’
‘Won’t they give you away?’
‘Hardly, for the gods can take very frightening revenges. But do you tell Dio, by the way, for the moment to leave their flocks and cattle alone. I need friends just now, not foes.’
‘Is Dio to know you lie here?’
‘He knows it well enough. But I’ve told you our code. It’s for me to make the first move and not until I can no longer be a danger to them.’ They had come to the bottom of the hill and he reined in his pony. ‘From here we must climb and on foot.’
Up and up: up through the small stunted oaks clothing the lower slopes of the peak; scrambling over the outcrop of rocks above. Now below them lay the three valleys converging on their peak, the silver river half encircling it, slowly dreaming by after its wild dash down the rocky waterfalls of the valley of its origins; flowing softly to meet the Towy they had left behind. She said: ‘It’s beautiful here. No Castle of Otranto with its pine-clad heights could be more beautiful, more romantic or more — awesome…’
He had chosen a cave on the western side, sheltered from the east winds; here dead leaves made a bed and he had tumbled-in a couple of rocks to serve as a stool and an uneven sort of table. A niche near the entrance provided a cool larder for his food and he spread before her a meal, delicious in the fresh morning air. When this is over, she thought, eyeing the leafy couch within the cave, I shall pay for it all, no doubt, and in the usual coin. Oh, well! — armoured in her love, it all meant nothing to her now.
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